(A finalist for the 2010 National Book Award and the 2011 Orange Prize) This powerful third novel from the author of The History of Love is a tapestry of narrative voices linked by their various connections to a huge old writing desk, stolen, inherited, bestowed, yet somehow containing the secrets of all the lives it passes through. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared. What do we pass on to our children, Nicole Krauss wonders, and how do they absorb our dreams and losses?

"This stunning work showcases Krauss's consistent talent. The novel consists of four stories divided among eight chapters, all touching on themes of loss and recovery, and anchored to a massive writing desk that resurfaces among numerous households, much to the bewilderment and existential tension of those in its orbit, among them a lonely American novelist clinging to the memory of a poet who has mysteriously vanished in Chile, an old man in Israel facing the imminent death of his wife of 51 years, and an esteemed antiques dealer tracking down the things stolen from his father by the Nazis. Much like in Krauss's The History of Love, the sharply etched characters seem at first arbitrarily linked across time and space, but Krauss pulls together the disparate elements, settings, characters, and fragile connective tissue to form a formidable and haunting mosaic of loss and profound sorrow."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)